![]() ![]() I knew it would severely affect my mental health and wellbeing at a fragile time for me.” “I couldn’t countenance building a new life with this happening as well. “If men went through menopause and the hormonal rollercoaster that accompanies it, there would be more research done and attention paid.”ĭawn, now 53, was in the middle of a stressful divorce when, to her horror, she began to bleed non-stop. I’m frequently exhausted and feel unable to cope at work and at home.” Despite her professional training she was, she says, “completely unprepared”. “I’m no longer the same person I was two years ago. “Menopause has brought my life crashing down around me,” reported Joy, a 48-year-old nurse whose irregular and heavy periods can now last for weeks. But a callout to Guardian readers asking about experiences in the run-up to menopause suggests that, for others, heavier, longer, more frequent or unpredictable bleeding has left them feeling vulnerable, anxious and exhausted. We say this is a typical thing – and there’s treatment Dr Jen Gunterįor some women, the end of reproductive life can mean little more than a few missed periods. ![]() No one says erectile dysfunction is ‘just part of men’s lives’. “You’ve reached the point where you think you know how to manage a female body, and suddenly it starts to wrongfoot you.” In extreme cases, a difficult menopause may even push women to consider dropping out of hard-earned careers, just when they should be reaching their professional prime. “It’s that constant fear that you might have a stain on the back of your skirt that you don’t know about,” says Helen Clare, a former biology teacher who retrained as a menopause educator after a difficult menopause herself, and now coaches other teachers on coping strategies. ![]() But even Pearson, who based the scene loosely on something that happened to her at an awards dinner, wrote afterwards that she still felt mortified discussing it the shame of losing control, of feeling “my body, usually so reliable, in open mutiny against me”, runs deep. “I read that book and thought: ‘Oh my God, this has happened to someone else,’” recalls Pickett. But there are few midlife equivalents, the notable exception being a scene in Allison Pearson’s 2017 novel How Hard Can It Be? where her 49-year-old heroine is caught out during a high-powered work event and ends up barricaded in the loo, bleeding all over the hotel’s fancy towels. Today younger women are increasingly upfront about their cycles, thanks to activist campaigns, taboo-busting books and such groundbreaking television moments as the period sex scene in Michaela Coel’s award-winning drama I May Destroy You. (Menopause is defined as the point of not having menstruated for a year.) Given about 13 million British women are either peri- or postmenopausal, with some trans and non-binary people on similar journeys, the silence seems oddly deafening. All at a time when many assumed their periods would be politely fading away. But it takes a different level of courage to talk publicly about wearing three pairs of knickers – just in case, or to cope with what the Canadian gynaecologist and author of The Menopause Manifesto Dr Jen Gunter calls a “supersoaker event” – the kind of bleeding that can flood through clothes, defeat even a combination of super-plus tampons and maternity towels, and leave women needing iron supplements or in some cases stop them leaving the house. Michelle Obama has spoken frankly about coping with hot flushes in the White House, and the Countess of Wessex recently confessed to having suffered menopausal brain fog. There must be women round the world just pretending they need to dash off for some other reason.” But because menstrual blood is gross in our society, there’s no conversation about it. “You can talk about hot flushes, make a joke about it. “If you have a bunch of 12-year-olds in the car, you can’t say: ‘Sorry chaps, I’m just bleeding heavily today,’” says Pickett, a 48-year-old breastfeeding counsellor and author of The Breast Book, who also happens to be among the one in five British women who suffer from heavy periods in the run-up to menopause (or perimenopause). Yet she rarely hears anyone talk about the reason so many older women secretly go to all this trouble why they’ve started to stick to black trousers, give up the sports they loved, or plan days out – especially with children – meticulously. She will often take an emergency change of clothes when she goes out, and if giving a lecture for work, has to ensure it is no longer than half an hour. ![]() If Emma Pickett needs to make a long journey, she checks her calendar very carefully. ![]()
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